It is not right to consider a corporation as an individual! Corporations are
formed to take advantage of benefits received. Nobody forced them into becoming
a corporation, but they did and they should obey the laws that apply! People set
aside their personal beliefs every day in order to do business! Can you imagine
if you had a list of all your religious ideas, and before doing business with
others, they all had to comply! How well would you do? If Hobby Lobby followed
their religion, like they say that they do, they would not do business with
anyone that uses contraceptives and has sex outside of marriage. Am I right?
Maybe it is a little bit easier to discriminate against employees!Live and
let live! I think people are getting sick of all the tea party, self righteous.
holier than thou attitudes! There are many out there passing judgment on others
and if the truth were known, they are not that good of a person themselves!
Watch out for those who brag about how good they are while they make sure to
point out the unacceptables! I wouldn't work for Hobby Lobby! I
wouldn't trust them!

markSalt Lake City, UT

March 31, 2014 12:52 a.m.

Jenica, this has nothing to do with forcing, or not forcing, employees to do
something, rather, the issue is if a business can refuse to obey the law based
on the religious believes of its owners.

And there is indeed a
slippery slope here, or more precisely a steep cliff. If the owners of hobby
lobby can receive an exemption to the law based on there religious believes then
ANYBODY can. If this is not true, then why the owners of hobby lobby? Why only
them and no one else? Of course religious exemption would have to apply to
everyone, if not, why only contraceptives? Why not other religious believes? The
government MUST treat everyone's religious believes equally, it cannot
place one persons religious believes above another's.

Therefore, Quaker's desire to not pay taxes that go to military
expenditures would HAVE to be honored.

You are right, though, when
you ask why should an individual have to rely on ecclesiastical leadership to
determine their believes. They don't. The government cannot be in a
position to determine WHICH religious believes are valid, or why.

Indeed, all men would be a law unto themselves.

anotherviewSLO, CA

March 28, 2014 4:15 p.m.

The Catholic Health Assoc is satisfied with the accommodations provided in the
ACA.

Apparently religious institutions are on both sides of the
debate.

How is Hobby Lobby "providing" contraceptives if
they aren't required to pay any portion of or administer the healthplan?
Couldn't the same argument apply that just by providing a paycheck to a
young woman who has had an abortion Hobby Lobby is facilitating the abortion?

Furthermore, If Hobby Lobby wants an "out" they have the
option of not providing health insurance at all and instead, pay the
"tax."

To argue that one has no choice in the matter is
simply not true.

How is it that we have male dominated courts and
legislators deciding what women's choices ought to be?

JenicaJessenRiverton, UT

March 28, 2014 3:10 p.m.

If a kosher deli refuses to sell bacon, are they "oppressing" pork
eaters? Are they "putting religious restrictions" on their customers and
employees by not handing out free pig meat to them?

I'm sorry, I
just don't see how refusing to personally provide some contraceptives
automatically equals forbidding the use of contraceptives. I can see the link
between totally forbidding any use of contraceptives ever and promoting
religious beliefs, and I can even see the link between enforcing religious
beliefs in a workplace and oppression. But "not funding X" is not even
close to the same as "forbidding X". If that's the rationale, than
pretty much everything the government doesn't fund is illegal.

cjbBountiful, UT

March 28, 2014 1:56 p.m.

No one is trying to tell the owners of Hobby Lobby that they can't live
their religion. The problem is Hobby Lobby owners will if they are allowed to,
put their own religious restrictions on their employees.

Jews and
Moslems do the same thing, because of their religion, they circumcise their
children while they are still too young to object. All if this is wrong.

factspleaseSLO, CA

March 28, 2014 11:05 a.m.

Employers under the ACA are not required to pay any portion of contraceptives,
nor administer a plan which provides access to contraceptives if they have
religious objections.

Additionally the ACA states:

Health Plans Cannot Be Required to Cover Abortion. No Federal Funds for
Abortion Coverage or Abortion Care. No Preemption of State or Federal Laws
Regarding Abortion. Conscience Protections for Providers and Facilities.

It could easily be argued that Hobby Lobby will contribute to MORE
unplanned pregnancies and therefore, MORE abortions by restricting access to
contraceptives.

JenicaJessenRiverton, UT

March 28, 2014 11:04 a.m.

Stalwart Sentinel: "Your argument is also mistaken. The family that owns a
company has no legal right to enforce its moral principles on the employees of
said company."

I think you must have misread my post. That's
exactly what I was saying. Hobby Lobby would "enforce its moral
principles" if they told employees that they were NOT allowed to use birth
control. Hobbby Lobby has done nothing of the kind. They have not said that
employees are forbidden to use birth control. They are not forcing employees to
live any set of "moral principles" when it comes to birth control. A
Hobby Lobby employee can use any form of birth control they want-- the question
is whether or not their employer should be forced to pay for it. (And as has
already been pointed out, of the twenty required birth control products, Hobby
Lobby is perfectly willing to fund sixteen.)

The Scientist: So in
order to believe that, say, the death penalty or war or abortion is wrong, I
have to have a church leader tell me so? Do I automatically forfeit any right to
think for myself or develop my own moral code by joining a religion?

SCfanclearfield, UT

March 28, 2014 10:45 a.m.

Scientist

The way you phrased your comment made it sound as if the
owners of Hobby Lobby were in some way associated with the LDS Church. I looked
them up and they are Christian and contribute to Oral Roberts University and
other Christian organizations. So, they might not even have an official church
organization or leadership like the LDS Church does. And, even if LDS, some
owner of a private business, for instance, could or could not serve alcohol if
they wanted to. It would make no difference if they were LDS. Example,
Marriott serves coffee and alcohol at the hotels. But if they didn't, and
based it on religion, do you think some law should be passed to force them to
serve it?

Not sure what your point was. And do you really want to
hear all the slippery slope arguments against a law you want? That can be a
wide field.

The ScientistProvo, UT

March 28, 2014 9:08 a.m.

Religious organizations be warned: you enforce the principle of "religious
freedom" for corporations here at your own peril.

All the
foregoing "slippery slope" arguments are, if not logically valid,
rhetorically suggestive, and should not be ignored. But beyond those arguments
there is the simple question of how the legitimacy of religious claims can be
established.

Specifically, Hobby Lobby owners claim that their
religion cannot support "abortifacients', and they have personally
interpreted what that entails. But no official Church officers have made
official statements supporting HL owners' personal interpretations about
what are and what are not "abortifacients". Hobby Lobby owners are NOT
official, ordained, authorities of the Church in which they claim membership.

Imagine an LDS business owner refusing to pay for cremation benefits,
despite the fact that the LDS Church does NOT have an official stand against
cremation. Who is authorized to declare what is and what is not Church doctrine
and policy?

Legally and ultimately, individuals who are not
ecclesiastical authorities will not be allowed to interpret religious
doctrine/positions. They will be required to back up their religious claims with
official doctrines. This will lead to more Pharisaic legalism in religion than
there already is.

SCfanclearfield, UT

March 28, 2014 8:31 a.m.

To all of you who are using the "slippery slope" argument, that argument
could be made with just about any law passed in America. It is a weak argument,
especially if that is all you have.

A QuakerBrooklyn, NY

March 28, 2014 8:04 a.m.

@Tekakaromatagi: What you may not understand is the reason that Quakers are
pacifists. It stems from our belief that all people are created equal, that
we're all imbued with "that of God," or if you prefer, an internal
Light. For that reason, we believe that to attack other people, you are
attacking God.

As far as pacifism goes, we believe it's not only
immoral to wage violence against someone, but that paying others to do so is
just as immoral. As such, we object to paying taxes that are used to support
military assets. Some Quakers have protested by going to jail, but the majority
feel that they can do more good by not being in jail, so we pay our taxes under
protest.

Looking at this "religious conscience" case before
SCOTUS now, I can't speak for other Quakers, but to me it looks like the
business owners are looking to be "more equal" than their employees,
arguing their religious consciences should be elevated to the repression of
others. I cannot support that. That is an affront to the principle of
equality.

CatsSomewhere in Time, UT

March 28, 2014 6:53 a.m.

All these "parades of horribles" being put forward by many of these
posters are not valid. This is a very narrow case that involves only the issues
of birth control and abortifacients with respect to religious conscience. It
doesn't involve any other issues.

Freedom of Religion is the
FIRST and most important right that is presented in the first amendment of the
Bill of Rights. There is a reason for that. The Founding fathers considered it
to be the first and most important of all human rights.

Let's
not get carried away with this. All these other theoretical issues don't
apply.

TekakaromatagiDammam, Saudi Arabia

March 27, 2014 11:07 p.m.

@Quaker:

As I understand, Quakers are pacifists and if there was a
war and there was a draft, a lot of the people arguing on behalf of Hobby
Lobby's case and their freedom of religion would support your right to be a
conscientious objector, even if they will be drafted to fill the place that you
are not filling.

You should do the same for them.

TekakaromatagiDammam, Saudi Arabia

March 27, 2014 11:04 p.m.

@Roland Kayser:"If Hobby Lobby wins, corporations will quickly
discover that they have all kinds of religious objections to many of our
laws."

Yes. I agree. But, the Democrats have opened a
Pandora's Box with intrusive regulations. At one time Sibelius said that
she was not aware that there would be problems with contraception mandates in
the ACA. I am not Catholic, and it was not a surprise to me. The people
running the government need to be more aware (and more tolerant) of different
cultural traditions in the US (and in the world). Given all the lip-service to
diversity it is kind of surprising.

Copy CatMurray, UT

March 27, 2014 10:41 p.m.

The real issue is not about discrimination in hiring, but I will play along with
Joe for a bit.

If a person has asthma which is triggered by cigarette
smoke, can they refuse to hire someone because they smell like smoke?

Can a health care facility refuse to hire people who smell like smoke, based
on the bad image it gives their business?

These are reasons someone
might not hire someone who smells like smoke, that have nothing to do with
religion.

But there are those in Utah who would claim that making
these decisions is based solely on religion.

It just ain't so
Joe.

People choose who they hire based on the prospective employees
behavior all the time. Otherwise they would just put resume's in a hat and
pick one. That is not the recipe for a successful business.

J in AZSan Tan Valley, AZ

March 27, 2014 9:37 p.m.

Stalwart Sentinel - In your response, I'm afraid that your logic is flawed
in two places. First the compelling government interest argument doesn't
work because first, the suit is not an attempt to deny access to an entire class
of therapeutic agents or to seek to be excused from compliance with the ACA
employer mandate. No other therapeutic class of drugs is required to have all
product covered by plans, only birth control drugs are being given this
privileged status. The plaintiffs are perfectly willing to fund 16 different
products, 75% of all approved products, from the birth control therapeutic
class. In fact, their pre-ACA health plans already fund those drugs. They are
suing for the right to not be forced to include two drugs and two medical
devices that they find to be morally objectionable based on the FDA approved
labeling and safety literature. Should the plaintiffs prevail, no employee will
be denied access to a wide range of safe and effective contraceptive drugs.

The second flaw coming in the next post.

A QuakerBrooklyn, NY

March 27, 2014 9:33 p.m.

How do you balance the religious freedom of the company's owner versus the
religious and personal freedom of his 13000 employees? Are they not entitled to
access the same federally-guaranteed employee benefits as employees of other
companies do? Are they not entitled to practice their own religion's
doctrine on reproductive matters?

Allowing Hobby Lobby to essentially
veto healthcare benefits for women who do not share the owner's viewpoint
is imposing a fine on them of several hundred dollars a year, the cost of buying
hormonal contraceptives outside their health plan. How is that fair?

What's his viewpoint on single women who get pregnant? Is he going to
only allow obstetric service coverage for married women next?

This is
perilous territory. I don't see how you can open this "religious
freedom" exception, when it essentially strips that freedom from the much
more numerous employees, leaving them subject to punitive penalties imposed by
their employer.

the truthHolladay, UT

March 27, 2014 7:26 p.m.

@Stalwart Sentinel

JenicaJensen is right on point.

The
imaginary problems if they support true religious freedom, are just that
imaginary.

The short answer is NO. none if those imaginary
hypothetical situations would happen.

None of these were ever
problems in the past before progressive twisted the interpretation of the first
amendment and will not be after.

Liberty and freedom for a moral
people is the answer.

More big government control and more enslaved
constrained moral-less people is not.

Stalwart SentinelSan Jose, CA

March 27, 2014 4:29 p.m.

J in AZ - I appreciate the thought but your response is not accurate. While I
understand that in order for this to make sense from your side of things, one
must claim that a "family" is being forced to do something but that is
factually incorrect. The family is not the company and vice versa. Put simply,
the actual legal issue of the case makes zero mention of any family; rather it
pits the personal exercise of religion against the govt's compelling
interest to enforce the ACA. The disconnect is that a for profit company does
not have a right to exercise a religion (distinguishing for profit from
non-profit religious-based institutions which are exempt from this ACA mandate).
If Hobby Lobby wants to hide behind the owner's personal moral
convictions, they can become a non-profit and be done with it. However, that is
unlikely b/c they are designed as a for profit enterprise, therefore they must
abide by the same laws as every other for profit endeavor.

JenicaJensen - Your argument is also mistaken. The family that owns a company
has no legal right to enforce its moral principles on the employees of said
company.

JenicaJessenRiverton, UT

March 27, 2014 1:51 p.m.

JoeBlow, that's a strawman. The question is not whether a religious
exemption would grant you the right to disobey any law you want. It is not even
whether or not private businesses can discriminate against those that they
consider sinners. The question is whether or not the family that owns a company
can be forced to FUND those "sins".

Hobby Lobby is not
forbidding their employees to use birth control, abortifacient or not. It is not
trying to fire those that use birth control, no matter what form that birth
control takes. It is simply refusing to provide funding for some forms. Their
employees are free to do whatever they want without retribution.

To
claim that a ruling in their favor would allow a Catholic employer to fire
divorcees is hyperbolic and a misunderstanding. A more accurate analogy would be
to say that ruling in their favor means that a Catholic employer could not be
forced to provide a divorce lawyer for an employee. The issue isn't whether
a company made up of LDS people can avoid hiring a drinker-- it's whether
they can be forced to give him booze.

J in AZSan Tan Valley, AZ

March 27, 2014 12:29 p.m.

And some more comments

The Skeptical Chymist wrote, "my problem
with a major line of jurisprudence centers on the idea that a corporation is a
person." This is not a new or novel legal theory. The concept that a
corporation has legal standing as a person was in my business law textbook 26
years ago.

Stalwart Sentinel wrote, "Following conservative logic
then I, as a Mormon, ought to be able to directly ask prospective employees in a
job interview whether they drink, smoke, or have had premarital sex." You
are getting a little of topic here. The question is if the government can force
these two families to pay for birth control measures that they find morally
repugnant.

This is not a case of someone not wanting to pay for any
kind of birth control measure. While health plans cover at least some drugs from
each theraputic class. Very few cover all drugs in each theraputic class.
Sometimes they cover only one. Both families already cover 75% of all approved
birth control drugs in the United States in the health plans that they provide
for their employees. They just don't want to pay for four products that
they find repugnant.

J in AZSan Tan Valley, AZ

March 27, 2014 12:09 p.m.

More comments

slcdenizen wrote, " Unless of course they want to
collect the tax benefits of offering health care and refuse to give up that
incentive." Under the current tax code, dropping health coverage and paying
the $2000 per employee per year winds up being more profitable for the
business.

Roland Kayser wrote, "If Hobby Lobby wins, corporations
will quickly discover that they have all kinds of religious objections to many
of our laws.' As previously stated, if the Green and Hahn families win, the
court will probably limit the decision so far as to make it applicable only to
businesses owned by a single family that has moral objections to those four
drugs and devices. No one else gets a piece of the pie.

J in AZSan Tan Valley, AZ

March 27, 2014 11:55 a.m.

If the court rules in favor of the Greens and Hahns, this is likely to be a
highly constrained ruling that will apply only to businesses owned by a single
family. The logic being that no matter what legal form was used to organize the
business, it is an extension of the lives of the owners.

Joe Blow
wrote, "Couldn't an LDS businessman refuse to hire someone who smokes
or drinks ?" They already can do that by saying that the smoking/drinking
applicant isn't a good fit for their staff. It's still legal in the
private world to reject applicants that you don't like.

HV
Heretic wrote, "This is because the owners of Hobby Lobby have incorrectly
labeled these methods ...; a claim popular among anti-choice ideologues but
refuted by scientific evidence and major reproductive health associations."
That doesn't matter. The FDA approved product labeling states that they may
prevent implantation of a fertilized egg. That approved information is all that
matters in the regulatory world until the manufacturers of these drugs and
devices present an application with scientific evidence to the FDA Center for
Drug Evaluation and Research to get that labeling changed.

OneWifeOnlySan Diego, CA

March 27, 2014 11:34 a.m.

How does society or the courts determine the religion of a corporation. Most
corporations have more than one shareholder. If the individuals making up the
shareholders of a corporation all have different religious views, then what
religion is the corporation? If all of the stockholders of Hobby Lobby
currently are members of the same religion but at some point in the future one
or more are converted to a different religion, is the corporation automatically
converted too? -- or does the corporation need to be baptized first? Bottom
line, corporations are not people.

Stalwart SentinelSan Jose, CA

March 27, 2014 9:31 a.m.

Following conservative logic then I, as a Mormon, ought to be able to directly
ask prospective employees in a job interview whether they drink, smoke, or have
had premarital sex. Should they answer in the affirmative to any of these
questions then I would be justified to not hire them on the basis that my
"religious for profit" company (oxymoron, if there ever was one)
doesn't allow for such sinful acts among it's employees.

Further, I will be legally justified to fire an employee for engaging in
premarital sex, chewing tobacco, or drinking coffee. Who could find anything
problematic with such a conservative utopia? Freedom!

The painful
truth here is that conservatives are terribly short-sighted. They love this
idea of corporate religion when it suits them for a political purpose but wait
until the tables are turned.

Happy Valley HereticOrem, UT

March 27, 2014 8:37 a.m.

Fact is Hobby Lobby sends millions of dollars to China for it's products.
China not only encourages abortions after one child but the state pays for
it.

Hobby Lobby already covered 16 of the 20 methods of contraception
mandated under the Affordable Care Act, but it didn't cover Plan B
One-Step, Ella (another brand of emergency contraception) and two forms of
intrauterine devices. This is because the owners of Hobby Lobby have incorrectly
labeled these methods of birth control and emergency contraception as
abortifacients; a claim popular among anti-choice ideologues but refuted by
scientific evidence and major reproductive health associations.

Hobby Lobby is hoping the Supreme Court will swallow pseudo-science as medical
fact, which, put politely, requires some serious guts. However it seems denying
science is hip with the conservative crowd so ignoring the facts or science
won't be hard.

The Skeptical ChymistSALT LAKE CITY, UT

March 27, 2014 8:31 a.m.

Also, I tend to agree with Justice Scalia's remarks in the 1989 case
"Employment Division v Smith", in which he wrote:

“[T]he right of free exercise does not relieve an individual of the
obligation to comply with a valid and neutral law of general applicability...
The rule respondents favor would open the prospect of constitutionally required
religious exemptions from civic obligations of almost every conceivable kind,
ranging from compulsory military service, to the payment of taxes, to health and
safety regulation such as manslaughter and child neglect laws, compulsory
vaccination laws, drug laws, and traffic laws; to social welfare legislation
such as minimum wage laws, child labor laws, animal cruelty laws, environmental
protection laws, and laws providing for equality of opportunity for the
races… To permit this, would be to make the professed doctrines of
religious belief superior to the law of the land, and in effect to permit every
citizen to become a law unto himself.”

I hope (but do not
expect) that Justice Scalia will be consistent with the views he expressed in
1989.

The Skeptical ChymistSALT LAKE CITY, UT

March 27, 2014 8:26 a.m.

My problem with a major line of jurisprudence centers on the idea that a
corporation is a person, with the rights of a person. This original error in
interpretation by the Supreme Court has now led to unlimited spending on
political campaigns by corporations, which is permitted by the doctrine that to
limit such spending would infringe on their right to free speech. In this case,
Hobby Lobby is attempting to gain religious freedom rights for corporations as
well.

A major purpose of incorporation of a family business is to
separate the monetary holdings of the corporation from those of the family, so
that a bankruptcy will allow the family to retain their personal assets. If a
family feels so strongly that they want their corporation to have all the rights
of a person, and not have to obey the laws that apply to all other corporations,
then I think they should disincorporate and eliminate the distinction between
the family assets and the corporate assets. Then, it would be fair to say that
the corporation has all the rights that are awarded to individual persons.

Karen R.Houston, TX

March 27, 2014 8:06 a.m.

@ JoeBlow

I read the transcript of the hearing and this is what
Justice Kennedy seemed to be wrestling with. How does the court not tread on
religious freedom without opening the door to the varying religious doctrines on
a wide array of activities and behaviors. HL's counsel conceded that the
courts would in fact have to deal with this, and determinations would
necessarily have to be made on a case-by-case basis. Can you imagine the number
of cases that could be filed? There goes more of my tax dollars in the service
of religion. Maybe I could file a lawsuit objecting to it...

JoeBlowFar East USA, SC

March 27, 2014 7:39 a.m.

How about the bigger picture. It seems that the crux of this case is that Hobby
Lobby should not have to fund something that runs counter to their religion.

But, cant you take this far beyond healthcare?

Couldn't
an LDS businessman refuse to hire someone who smokes or drinks since they would
be ultimately providing the funds to purchase these products?

Could a
Catholic business owner fire someone who gets divorced?

Can a
businessman refuse to provide maternity leave or childbirth coverage to the
unmarried?

How about limiting maternity coverage to only 1 child?

Be careful how broadly you paint with a religious brush. The exemptions
just might expand to include you.

BadgerbadgerMurray, UT

March 27, 2014 7:34 a.m.

When you have a liberal Harvard Law professor who can see that the principle of
religious freedom does matter, that is a pretty strong endorsement, and it is
refreshing to see that someone who believes differently can consider and see the
other side's point of view. A far more dignified position than, "my
boss needs to buy contraceptives for me, nanny nanny nanny, no exceptions."
I am sure by tomorrow this comment page will be filled with insensitive comments
by cynical people who think they have the right to tell others what to think,
do, and buy for them.

It's $9 a month folks. Your employer pays
you money, and you are welcome to use that money to buy the contraceptives you
want. You are completely free. Quit playing the victim card while trying to
enslave your employer.

Roland KayserCottonwood Heights, UT

March 27, 2014 7:21 a.m.

If Hobby Lobby wins, corporations will quickly discover that they have all kinds
of religious objections to many of our laws. Just one example: Promoting women
to supervise men conflicts with some statements in the bible. Will
anti-discrimination laws be the next case?

Karen R.Houston, TX

March 27, 2014 6:29 a.m.

Re: the author's sidebar...

Ah, yes, it is so easy to be
anti-abortion. There are the "moral" and "righteous" credits to
be gained, and the justification these provide for being judgmental. And all
while bearing no responsibility whatsoever for the lives we pat ourselves on the
back for "saving."

Another of life's little mysteries:
How some can be so concerned about theoretical lives, yet so oblivious to the
actual living beings right in front of them.

slcdenizent-ville, UT

March 27, 2014 5:11 a.m.

Why are we making this case larger than it has to be? If providing certain
health care requirements conflict with their religious beliefs, they are not
required to provide health care to their employees. It's that simple.
Encourage employees to sign up for the state's insurance exchange where the
stores are located. Then the corporate office has its' hands clean of
providing abortifacients. Unless of course they want to collect the tax benefits
of offering health care and refuse to give up that incentive. But that's
just me being cynical, isn't it?